Tools & Resources To Create Digital Downloads

You may ask, “what if I don’t know how to make the digital downloads?”

Almost all the time, you will be able to find tutorials of how to make the design on Youtube, Skillshare or Udemy. 

For tools, there are many to choose from and it can be overwhelming. Some of the most common ones are:

• Canva (overall great option for selling digital designs)
• Corjl (for hosting editable templates)
• Templett (alternative to Corjl)
• JetTemplate (alternative to Corjl with NO monthly fee)
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Lightroom (for editing photos & making Lightroom presets)
• Affinity Photo & Designer (alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom without a monthly subscription)
• Gimp (free online alternative to Photoshop)
• Inkscape (free alternative to Illustrator)
• Picmonkey (alternative to Canva)
• Procreate (illustration tool for iPad)
• Apple Keynote (for creating digital planners for Goodnotes)

For Editable Printable Templates

The platform that I recommend for editable templates is Corjl. It's also the platform that I use for Growing Your Craft. It’s cheaper than Templett, which is a close competitor of Corjl with similar functionalities. Some advantages of Corjl over Templett:

• Cheaper
• Can edit on mobile
• Load faster in general (unless designs have too many layers)
• Provides demo link so that customers can try it out first (Canva doesn’t have this feature)

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Another great choice is JetTemplate. Although the functionalities are a bit more limited than Corjl, it can do most of what Corjl can do with no monthly costs. You only have to pay (US$0.3) if you make a sale, which is great for new sellers who want to test out new editable template ideas with minimum cost.

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It's also possible to use Canva for editable templates. You are able to generate 'template link', and customers with the link can copy the design to their own Canva account to edit the template themselves. One drawback of using Canva for editable templates is that the link can be used by anyone who has the link. That means no one can stop a customer buying your template once and sharing with other people. But this is unlikely to happen often and successful template shops are using Canva like CreativeJamCo.

For Most Other Digital Designs

I would recommend Canva for digital products that are not editable by customers. Mainly because it:

• Loads fast
• Intuitive to use
• Lots of assets and fonts to use in designs
  

For this course, we will focus on Corjl and Canva to create and/or host our designs.

Some Extra Tools & Websites To Have With You

Choosing Colours That Look Good Together

One of my favourite tools is Colorhunt. It is a tool that give you colour palette of what looks good together. It’s great for creating variations of designs.

Learning How To Use The Tools

My advice is to just try out the tools. They are both intuitive to use and you should be able to get the hang of it in an afternoon. And we will run through the basics in the next chapter. But if you’d like to learn more, follow the Corjl tutorial or the Canva tutorial.

Using Different Fonts

Other than getting font inspirations from successful designs from previous steps, I also find this Canva Font Pairing Guide useful.

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More Design Inspirations

I also use Dribbble and Pinterest for more design inspirations.

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